CRAFT REMEDIATION (2018 - 19)

CRAFT REMEDIATION

(2018-19)

Craft Remediation, is a time-based installation and hands-on permaculture approach for phytoremediation. It aims to discuss how the praxis of care can be understood in a craft context, and how a more cyclical and empathic approach to materials and resources can be activated on a local scale. The idea of caring and harvesting are explored not only in a human encounter, but materialized and extended in dialogue with-non humans, particularly plants acquired from the neighbourhood of Aspudden, and technology used to measure the photosynthetic activity in plants.

The investigation started at Vinterviken in Aspudden, a post-industrial site where Alfred Nobel invented an enormous revolution for armaments and explosive manufacturing: dynamite. The side effect of the industrial activities in Vinterviken that started in the 1860s have led to soil contamination in the area. In response to this specific local history, the research project explores, among other ideas, domestic mining as a method for extracting pollutants from contaminated soil.

In the making process, I have attempted to shift my relationship to materials — to move away from a linear extract-produce-discard model in favour of a more sustainable circular approach using a harvest-care-remediate model whereby alternative materials are derived from post-industrial leftovers and waste. In this shift, the idea of care is explored not only to non-humans in the natural environment — to materials and plants, but it is also extended through practice-sharing and community building, to its in habitants, and its ‘resources’.

The project as a whole, is an artistic and technological investigation that, through an evolving installation, jewellery, objects and interactions, starts a dialogue about a possible ecological remediation, having as its starting point an emotional response to the post-industrial landscape we live in today.